Usually, you would expect a video game to be an overall fun time. However, according to these theories, that couldn’t be further from the truth. In honor of the Halloween season, here are three spooky video game conspiracy theories that have yet to be confirmed or denied.

Polybius

The Polybius arcade machine is possibly the most famous conspiracy theory in the gaming world — the machine even managed to make its way onto an episode of “The Simpsons.”

According to the theory, only two machines were made and placed in different locations across Portland, Oregon. As people would play the game, they would experience headaches, nausea, nightmares, and even on some accounts, suicidal thoughts. Men in black suits would be seen going to the arcades where these cabinets would be located and download the data that the game produced from the people playing it.

While there have been no confirmations on this spooky story, its fame continues to live on.

Berzerk

Berzerk is supposedly the first game to cause the death of players. Allegedly, the arcade cabinet would take the lives of a few different people.

The first person, known as Jeff Dailey reached a high score of 16,660. Soon after he died due to a heart attack.

The second person, Peter Bukowski played the game and reach a top 10 spot twice. As he got off the cabinet to play something else, he collapsed, also due to a heart attack. 

Final Fantasy VIII

Due to the Playstations limited memory capacity, many games of that era would have to be spread out on a number of disks. Final Fantasy VIII was one of those games, spanning 4 discs that you would need to swap between as you progress through the game.

Follow us on this theory: At the end of the first disk, Squall and his crew face off against Edea on top of a parade float in Deling city. When the fight concludes and Edea is seemingly defeated, she summons a large shard of ice and impales Squall through the chest. As he falls back, Rinoa, his love interest, is seen reaching out to him and Squall seemingly dies. 

While you may think “well, that’s the end of that,” you would be wrong. 

As the second disc comenses, Squall wakes up with no visible wounds of his fight against Edea, making it seem as if it never happened or that what he’s experiencing is a dream. The running theory in the Final Fantasy community is that Squall did not survive his encounter with Edea, and is in fact dead, and everything that he is witnessing is a “what if” fever dream before he finally passes. This can be backed up even more at the end of the game where it briefly flashes to Squall without a face.

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